Performance

Judging the performance of a laptop bag like this one is divided up into three different categories. First what will the bag hold? Will it hold everything you need it to? The second thing you need to look at is how well it is going to protect your expensive equipment. Just because it can hold it all doesn’t mean it’s going to be very well protected. The last thing you need to look at is how well will the bag going to hold up to use. None of it matters if the bag falls apart and drops all of the equipment that you managed to pack into it all over the floor. With this bag from Everki we will look at each of these categories.

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What will it hold

Because I use the Qosmio for LANs and work there are a few things that I need to be able to carry with it to be ready to go. That list consists of our laptop, the giant charger, a gaming mouse, 1tb external, 25 foot Ethernet cable, and a mouse pad. As you can see in our photos everything from our list fit in the bag with lots of room to go. Everki packed this bag with pouches and pockets all over.

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There are three sections to the bag. On the front there is an area held closed by Velcro. The pouch covers the entire front of the bag with lots of room. The opening to the pouch isn’t as wide as the pouch itself but this is a great area to drop all of your goodies in. for us we put our network cable and mouse pad in here, but there is still room for anything else you might pick up while traveling or at a LAN.

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The second area is enclosed by a zipper and has a bright orange interior. Those who know me know how much I love the color orange so the color alone was a plus. Inside there are 5 different pouches along with two pen holders. Two of the pouches are made of a mesh and the rest is fabric. I used the two mesh areas to keep our power brick in place. In our photo if you didn’t know better, it almost looks like there isn’t much room here. But you have to remember that the power brick to the Qosmio is literally the size of an actual brick. Just being able to fit it into a pouch at all was impressive. This is where I packed all of my other goodies away. I could have packed more in here if I needed it just by packing the cords for the external and power brick with their respective devices. Our Razer Deathadder fit in the mouse pouch fine also. Even after all of the pouches are full this area could be a great place to store a notepad, papers, or even a book.

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The last area is the laptop compartment. Surprisingly our giant laptop fit in here with room to spare. This is the first time I have been able to put my laptop away without having to fit trying to zip it up. In fact there was almost too much room left over. Everki gave you extra flexibility in thickness also; you could almost pack a second laptop in here if you needed to.

 

How well will it protect

The key to protection on a laptop bag is padding around key components, strong materials, and keeping water out. The obvious place to start is the laptop compartment itself. It doesn’t matter if your mouse survives if your laptop is broken in two. For this bag you have ¾ inch of protective foam on each side of your laptop. Around the top and bottom the padding is around a ½ inch thick. The second compartment with our mouse, hard drive, and power brick shares the laptops protection on its back side and on the front side there is somewhere between a ½ inch and ¼ inch of padding. The font pouch is for items you don’t have to worry about being broken like our Ethernet cable and mouse pad.

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I mentioned before that strong materials and water protection are also important on top of padding. Each of the zippers on the Advance Laptop Bag are water resistant with a small piece of polyester from the outside of the bag running all the way under the zipper mechanism. Between that and the high quality polyester exterior you shouldn’t have to worry about water getting to your equipment as long as you keep it zipped up. Of course the front pouch is still the odd man out. Without a zipper up top to keep the elements out it can still get water in. It does have Velcro keeping it as closed as possible though.

 

How will it hold up

The difference between a quality product can be found in the material’s used and in how everything is manufactured. Ending up with a poor quality bag can be really disappointing, even more so if you really like the design. Everki did a good job with the Advance Laptop Bag. Starting at the inside of the main compartment you can see added support on the seam where the top and sides meet. They even went as far as covering it all with a black material after putting it all together, giving it the same fit and finish as you would see on the outside of your bag. Around every seam you have double stitching to keep everything together for years to come. Another feature I was impressed with and anyone who has been stuck in a coat after jamming up their zipper will appreciate this one. Everki included self-healing zippers just in case things get off track. Across the back the trolley handle pass through is thick and will keep your laptop attached to your roll around carry on when needed.  If you had any worries Everki also includes a lifetime warranty.

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #21643 16 Dec 2011 19:07
Finally a bag for those crazy enough to use an 18.4 inch laptop

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